Re: [PATCH 0/6] Support DAX for device-mapper dm-linear devices

[Kani, Toshimitsu]

On Mon, 2016-06-13 at 16:18 -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> Thanks Toshi!
> 
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > This patch-set adds DAX support to device-mapper dm-linear devices
> > used by LVM.ÂÂIt works with LVM commands as follows:
> > Â- Creation of a logical volume with all DAX capable devices (such
> > ÂÂÂas pmem) sets the logical volume DAX capable as well.
> > Â- Once a logical volume is set to DAX capable, the volume may not
> > ÂÂÂbe extended with non-DAX capable devices.
>
> I don't mind this, but it seems a policy decision that the kernel does
> not need to make.ÂÂA sufficiently sophisticated user could cope with
> DAX being available at varying LBAs.ÂÂWould it be sufficient to move
> this policy decision to userspace tooling?

I think this is a kernel restriction. ÂWhen a block device is declared as
DAX capable, it should mean that the whole device is DAX capable. ÂSo, I
think we need to assure the same to a mapped device.

In LVM level, a volume group may contain both DAX and non-DAX capable
devices. ÂThere is no restriction for creating/extending a volume group.

> > The direct_access interface is added to dm and dm-linear to map
> > a request to a target device.
>
> I had dm-linear and md-raid0 support on my list of things to look at,
> did you have raid0 in your plans?

Yes, I hope to extend further and raid0 is a good candidate. ÂÂ

Thanks,
-Toshi